David Frum: Republicans on course to repeat their Obamacare mistake

In this debt-ceiling fight, I’m having horrible flashbacks to the Republican debacle over health care. Then as now, what could have been a negotiated deal turned into all-out political war. Then as now, Republicans rejected all concessions by the president as pathetically inadequate. Then as now, Republicans refused any concessions of their own, instead demanding that the president yield totally to their way of thinking. Then as now, Republicans convinced themselves that they had the clout to force the president to yield.

With health care, Republicans calculated spectacularly wrong. They pursued an all or nothing strategy and got — nothing. They neither shaped the bill, nor did they stop it.

Will they make the same mistake again on the debt ceiling?

We don’t know the exact shape of the offers President Obama has made inside the negotiating rooms. Republicans tell friendly journalists that the president has been highhanded and long-winded.

Perhaps.

But the president has gone on television to declare himself willing to consider some startling moves: alterations to Social Security cost-of-living formulas, raising the age at which retirees qualify for Medicare, and large dollar figures for deficit reduction over the next decade.

On background, administration briefers have talked about a package consisting of 85% spending cuts and 15% revenue increases. And, they said, they wanted only the kinds of revenue increases least obnoxious to Republicans: changes in deductions and tax credits — not increases in overall tax rates.